pictures

I have been working hard on the yard and garden. I want to write a lot more about a lot of things, but I am so bushed every night I just pick up whatever disaster the kids made and go to bed. Here is the short version of what I’ve been up to.

The chicken coop is almost done, tonight is the first night the chickens are actually IN it (they are two months old!). They have trashed my downstairs bathroom for the past month while Adam has been working on the coop. It still needs its windows and other doors, etc. but it is almost finished:

Exterior, still waiting for steps and windows…

Chickens inside! They seem to really like it in there

Milly wanted to get in there too :^)

I have eaten some stuff from my garden, some broccoli and a radish! Still a long way to go for the onions, shallots, peas and beans and potatoes. Some of the lettuces I planted look a little mangy. The spinach doesn’t seem to be working well at all. This is my “learning year” anyway, I didn’t expect everything to grow well. The cauliflower looks awful, the curds are ricey and not too appetizing. Cauliflower is sooo hard to grow, in my opinion. Maybe that will be my goal; to get a good head of cauliflower.

We finally bought a lawnmower and I have really been enjoying mowing my hideously overgrown yard. We don’t have much of a lawn, there are a lot of sandy patches, pine needles and weeds galore but it is MY yard, and though I got badly sunburned, I enjoy taking care of it. Next year I will work more on the grass, and reclaiming the marshy, spongy paddock – for now we are really still settling in. I always plan more stuff than I can possibly do so I am trying to have a “five year plan” instead of a “do it all the first year” plan. Maybe next year we can get riding mower like we always had when I was a kid. Our yard is just a little too big to comfortably mow the whole thing in an afternoon (but I am not complaining about having a lot of yard, believe me).

Here are the girls drawing in the chicken coop with carpenter’s pencils